A mechanistic understanding of transport and degradation processes of modern agricultural pesticides, including chiral pesticides, is critical for predicting their fate in the environment. In agricultural landscapes, wetlands can intercept pesticide-contaminated runoff or groundwater and improve water quality through various retention and degradation processes, which remain unknown. In a downscaling approach, three different wetlands receiving agricultural runoff were used as 'natural laboratories' to investigate the fate of widely used pesticides. Overall, our results showed that dynamics of hydrological and redox conditions largely influenced pesticide sorption mechanisms and their distribution over time within wetland compartments, thereby controlling degradation processes. While large-scale studies provide integrative information on pesticide dissipation and distribution patterns with respect to wetland functioning, small-scale investigations using novel methods such as isotope and enantiomer analyses characterize underlying molecular processes governing pesticide degradation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-01019664 |
| Date | 14 March 2014 |
| Creators | Maillard, Elodie |
| Publisher | Université de Strasbourg |
| Source Sets | CCSD theses-EN-ligne, France |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD thesis |
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